In the oil and gas industry, current practice in planning a multiple-well package for a field does not include determination of the optimal placement for wells and their target completion zones based on the production from the field and the associated economics. Currently, well planning is limited to evaluating a few scenarios for well plans in a static-geologic model with manual and time-consuming evaluation in a simulator. This conventional well planning method, and its associated technology, is limited to multiple, discrete planning steps.
In “Optimal Field Development Planning of Well Locations with Reservoir Uncertainty” by Cullick et al. (“SPE 96986”), for example, a part of the well planning process is described as being automated by optimizing movement of perforation zones in a simulator to evaluate field production. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 7,096,172 describes automated well target selection based on static properties of the geologic formation. The workflow described in SPE 96986 begins with a static, geologic, base model of the oilfeld, which may include porosity, permeability, and the like. New well locations are planned based upon the static geologic model and the various corresponding properties in a three-dimensional grid, Cartesian grid or corner point grid. The new well locations and associated characteristics are exported as locations in a three-dimensional grid, for example. Perforations are then computed in the i, j, k grid coordinates and exported as well perforation intervals. A model is then compiled by selecting decision variables in a simulator data deck; selecting delta i, delta j, delta k for perforations subject to grid boundary conditions; selecting on off parameters for perforations; and setting up an objective function. The model is then executed by techniques further described in SPE 96986.
Nevertheless, the techniques and workflows described in SPE 96986 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,096,172, which are incorporated herein by reference, fail to describe a solution for: i) optimizing while simultaneously verifying well drillability and hazards; ii) computing updates to true well geometry/trajectory and tie-back connections to pipelines and delivery systems; and iii) locating optimal formation perforation zones with true production from dynamic flow of oil, gas, and water. In other words, these conventional techniques and workflows merely move perforations from one grid location to another grid location without recomputing the wellbore geometry and honoring drilling constraints.
There is therefore, a need for automatically planning well locations with dynamic production criteria.